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Anotheb Fillet of Beef

A beef fillet braised with doves, onions, and stock, finished with a soy‑flour gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Anotheb Fillet of Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Lard the tenderloin with pork.

Simmer

  1. Place the tenderloin in a saucepan with beef stock, pepper, salt, doves, and onion.

  2. Simmer for 2 hours.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Remove the beef and discard the fat from the gravy.

  2. Stir in flour and water.

  3. Add soy sauce.

  4. Bring the gravy to a boil.

  5. Pour a little of the gravy over the meat.

  6. Serve the remaining gravy in a gravy boat.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  2. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Beef tenderloin
Forms the main meat; slow simmering keeps it moist and tender enough to serve.
Pork fat
Larding adds fat that bastes the lean tenderloin and keeps it moist during simmering.
Beef stock
Forms the cooking liquid and base of the gravy, carrying savory flavor.
Flour
Thickens the strained cooking liquid into a gravy with body.
Soy sauce
Adds savory, salty depth and a little color to the gravy.

The step that matters

Stirring in the flour and water. Flour needs to be fully dispersed in the water before it meets hot liquid, or it forms lumps instead of thickening the gravy smoothly. Bringing the gravy to a boil afterward activates the starch.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pork, pepper, flour, sauce):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pork, pepper, flour, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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